Christmas season is supposed to be about many things, one of which is giving and this year somebody decided that taking was more in their line of desires. Yes there is more to the story... As you will both remember I had to order some new parts to finish the engine install. Well those parts arrived on Christmas eve and sat for almost 5 minutes on our porch before some bitch drove up and decided she needed the 5 boxes on our porch more that we did. Got a great video of her helping herself to our packages but of course nothing identifiable is visible so this will just get chalked up to out of pocket expenses. Sometimes humanity really sucks.
Anyway with lots of family time and a few flights with friends I have to admit that this Christmas was very good. Now on with the pictures.
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| Beautiful Christmas decorations. Amy and the kids always try to color coordinate the presents even! |
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| One of the "flights with friends"... |
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| There is supposed to be a shim where you see that gap but unfortunately the shim would not fit. I ended up tapering the shim on the belt sander and with a file to make it fit. Then I had to match drill from the side skins into this steel gear weldment. |
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| Here it is with section 28 almost done. I think at this point I still had a couple of rivets to set as well as removing the gear weldments for deburring. |
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| Front side of the firewall with the fuel supply and return line fittings installed. Note that these are steel fittings instead of the aluminum fittings Van's supplies. This is courtesy of my friend Harry who has seen the aluminum fittings fail when attached to an engine that shakes like a wet dog at times. |
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| Brake lines installed. |
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| Aft end of the tunnel where the brakes lines and fuel supply/return lines turn and head out toward the wings. |
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| And finally outboard look in at the brake line, fuel return and fuel supply lines. Oh, and two ear plugs! |
